blanka Rósa
https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7316-5218 Stockholms Universitet
At the intersection of development, disability
and postcolonial theory.
Are people with a disability marginalised among
the marginalised?
Na styku rozwoju, niepełnosprawności i teorii postkolonialnej.
Czy osoby niepełnosprawne są marginalizowane wśród osób
marginalizowanych?
Streszczenie. Nierówności i niesprawiedliwości wynikające z klasyfikowania/różnicowania
ludzi ze względu na rasę, płeć, orientację seksualną, pochodzenie etniczne, wyznanie lub na-rodowość stanowią przedmiot zainteresowania zarówno dyskursu rozwojowego, jak i dys-kursu postkolonialnego, podczas gdy kwestia niepełnosprawności pozostaje w cieniu. Tym-czasem zgodnie z założeniami Światowej Organizacji zdrowia (WHO), w tym realizowanego przez nią projektu Poprawa zdrowia Psychicznego na rzecz Rozwoju Narodów (MIND), nie-pełnosprawność to bariera rozwoju, czynnik globalnie przyczyniający się do ubóstwa, nierów-ności i niesprawiedliwości, a nie odwrotnie. Dlatego też kategoria niepełnosprawnierów-ności powin-na być brapowin-na pod uwagę w istotnych z perspektywy wyzwań XXI w. badaniach poświęconych wykorzystywaniu i osłabianiu relacji władzy w celu wyeliminowania różnic społecznych. Po-stulat ten koresponduje z założeniami formułowanych obecnie koncepcji teoretycznych, któ-re podkktó-reślają konieczność czerpania zarówno z rozważań dotyczących niepełnosprawności, jaki i z postkolonialnych debat na temat sprawiedliwości społecznej i roli, jaką edukacja może odgrywać w budowaniu sprawiedliwych społeczeństw i urzeczywistnianiu idei równości osób na całym świecie.
Artykuł wprowadza w koncepcje rozwoju, niepełnosprawności i teorii postkolonialnej, a także akcentuje potrzebę krytycznych i wieloaspektowych badań nad niepełnosprawnoś-cią w celu dekolonizacji aktualnych praktyk oraz sprawienia, by marginalizowana i dyskre-dytowana wiedza o złożonym i heterogenicznym doświadczeniu niepełnosprawności stała się obecna w przestrzeni publicznej. Wreszcie tekst ten ma na celu podkreślenie, że zdekolo-nizowane rozumienie niepełnosprawności powinno być nieodłącznym elementem obecnych programów edukacyjnych – integralnym z procesami rozwojowymi – ponieważ różnice
mię-dzy ludźmi nie powinny być czynnikami zubożającymi, ale wzmacniającymi relacje mięmię-dzy- między-ludzkie.
Słowa kluczowe: rozwój oparty na sprawiedliwości społecznej; krytyczne wieloaspektowe
badania niepełnosprawności; teoria postkolonialna; projekt WHO MIND; marginaliza-cja; wieloaspektowa edukacja w zakresie sprawiedliwości
Summary. While inequalities and injustices originating from the social categorisations of
race, gender, sexual orientation, ethnicity, religion, or nationality seem to be a general focus of both development and postcolonial discourses, the issue of disability seems to be rather overshadowed. Therefore, since even the World Health Organisation (WHO) itself and its Mental Health Improvements for Nations Development (MIND) project represents disability as a barrier to development – so as a factor globally contributing to poverty, inequality, and injustice and not the other way around – there is a need to extend our attention when investigating exploiting and disempowering power relations inherent in the 21st century
that aim at eliminating human differences. The present theoretical inquiry concentrates thus on emphasising a call for bringing together the disability and postcolonial debates in the investigation of social-justice-based development and the role education might in general play in the realisation of just societies and the equality of all individuals around the world. The paper starts by shortly introducing the concepts of development, disability, and postcolonial theory, and then aims at accentuating the need of a critical global disability studies for the sake of decolonising current practices and making present, marginalised, and disaccredited knowledges of a complex and heterogeneous disability experience. Finally, the paper highlights that a decolonised understanding of disability should be inherent in present educational agendas – integral to development processes – because human differences should not be factors that impoverish but that empower human relationships.
Key words: social-justice-based development; critical global disability studies; postcolonial
theory; WHO’s MIND project; marginalisation; global justice education
Introduction
Development is a concept that in general pervades a country’s operational spirit as the intention of societies to strive for a level of life that is “better”, “higher”, “more”, or “richer” is more than commonplace. Yet, since there are different ways to define development itself, the perspective chosen by a na-tion, for instance, in order to “develop” will inevitably influence the con-cerned measures to be taken; development therefore is not only a common but also a very complex concept.
The focus of this present article lies thus on the investigation of social-justice-based development and on emphasising a call for bringing together
the disability and postcolonial debates within social justice-based develop-ment discourses, and on the role education might in general play in the real-isation of just societies and the equality of all individuals around the world. Arguing for the recognition of a complex and heterogeneous disability ex-perience and the abandonment of what grech (2012) refers to as the he-gemony of normality, the article can be best realised as a theoretical exam-ination of the power dynamics that link together the concepts of disability and postcolonialism (Sherry, 2007, p. 16) and influence contemporary ex-periences and understandings of identity. After shortly introducing the con-cepts of development, disability, and postcolonial theory, the paper concen-trates on arguing for how a critical global disability studies could fit both into development and educational agendas, while the concluding words aim to reflect and synthesize a fresh insight into a wider understanding of de-velopment studies.
Introducing the concepts of development, disability,
and Postcolonial Theory
development
Development studies is a cross-disciplinary field that aims at capturing the complexity of defining the notion of development (Desai & Potter, 2014). It is argued that different definitions of development result in different devel-opment theories that constitute the mostly normative theoretical base for development strategies. However, while what lies at the heart of both devel-opment theories and strategies is to bring about change in society, “all such efforts to effect change reflect some form of ideological base […] [that] re-flect social, economic, cultural, ethical, moral, and even religious influenc-es” (Potter, 2014, p. 139–140). That is, different development ideologies in-fluence the way one looks at development itself, they inin-fluence the way one defines development, how one theorizes change, and the idea behind how this change is put into action is also forced ideologically. Consequently, the spirit in which policy reforms are created as part of a development strategy is never neutral or objective, this underlying spirit decisively motivates how and what sense of development is measured, and it inevitably defines the role education plays in the specific concept of development.
That being said, goulet (1971) argues that there are three core con-ceptions – life sustenance, self-esteem, and freedom – that cannot be ab-sent from any manifestations of development ideas. Life sustenance for him
means that “[n]o country can be regarded as fully developed if it cannot pro-vide all its people with such basic needs as housing, clothing, food and min-imal education”, “[s]elf-esteem is concerned with the feeling of self-respect and independence”, and “[f]reedom refers to the ability […] to determine [one’s] own destiny” i.e. “[n]o person is free if they are imprisoned on the margins of subsistence with no education and no skills” (goulet, 1971 cited in Thirlwall, 2014, p. 62–63). Also, the organisation of Comhlámh (2008 cit-ed in Chataika, 2012, p. 253), for instance, formulates a similar perspective of development where the aim is to “[free] people from obstacles that affect their ability to develop their own lives and communities”. These two defi-nitions were thus chosen to be included because, as far as I am concerned, these are the ones that represent the widest concept of development that we as researchers of human and social sciences cannot afford to lose sight of. exceeding the scope of development measured in terms of economic growth or human development, these definitions speak for the members of the
so-ciety as individuals who are free and themselves are in power of their own
destiny. That is, these definitions illustrate the importance of education as a guiding force in developing self-sufficiency and emphasize an urge to
con-centrate on all members of a country in development discussions, I believe.
Yet, it needs to be acknowledged that the very discourse of develop-ment and so the contemporary controversies about poverty, inequality, and injustice stem undeniably from the global historical context of coloni-alism. Recognising connections between aspects of development, colonial-ism, and race (Desai & Potter, 2014) and unlearning the “Western”, “white”, and “male” privileging of identity that characterizes power relations even in
the 21st century is thus crucial for the eradication of all types of Othering
and so for the realisation of just societies (Spivak, 1994). I cannot help but recognise, however, that while issues of race, class, gender, ethnicity and re-ligion are in general profoundly talked about in the field, discussions about marginalisation even within development studies lack a great amount of ac-count on the Othering of people with a disability.
disability
Moving now on to consider what a disability is, we soon realise that it is a similarly complex concept as development itself. Not only does the defi-nition of the word disability take different forms around the world both via legislative systems and cultural understandings, but what we understand on a disability i.e. human, biological and individual differences is also
pre-determined by the theoretical philosophical perspective one chooses to take on. Notwithstanding, the positivist tendency of “modelling” has been unde-niably the dominant concept of theorizing within disability studies that is in core a mostly Western i.e. european and North American academic field (grech, 2012). The two major models are the medical and the social mod-el of disability where the difference is explained by Silvers as the following:
Whilst the medical model treats disability to be a problem requiring medi-cal intervention as both the prerogative and responsibility of medimedi-cal profes-sionals to fix, the social model understands disability as a political problem calling for corrective action by citizen activists who alter people’s attitudes and reform the practices of the state (Silvers, 2010, p. 19).
As it offers a prospect of change within society, most social researchers of disability studies tend to identify disability with the social model (Chatai-ka, 2012). What is exactly meant on the social model, however, also requires further clarification. By differentiating between disability and impairment, Sherry (2007), for example, recognises two definitions of the social model of disability that, in fact, might seem controversial, yet, consenting both is in-evitable for the comprehension of the discourse around disability. explain-ing the social model, Sherry (2007, p. 10) thus calls for the differentiation of disability from impairment, as while impairment is defined “as a form of biological, cognitive, sensory or psychiatric difference that is defined with-in a medical context”, disability is the “negative social reaction to those dif-ferences”, he argues. The definition of disability described by Sherry is thus closely related to questions of identity, which means that according to this understanding disability “is not necessarily regarded as a bad thing – it is an identity, with both social and personal dimensions, which may be asso-ciated with feelings of community, solidarity, and pride, or conversely, with feelings of difference, exclusion, and shame”’ (Sherry, 2007, p. 10). An ob-vious intensification of identity politics within the disability movement can therefore be realised (Sherry, 2007), which involvement with identity poli-tics, however, raises some crucial questions. Who are people with a disabili-ty actually? How do they end up as “disabled”, so how do they come to spend the whole of their adulthood with such a label as disability? Who decides on what an “able” and a “dis-able” body is and looks like in the first place? And finally, how is it possible that Simi Linton (2005, p. 520), a disability schol-ar herself with a disability, is “stuck using” such a word as impairment in her research because “[she does] not have another word to describe the forms
[their] bodies and sensory systems take and the way those forms function”? In fact, Barker and Murray (2010, p. 228) argue that despite its seeming-ly humanitarian character and its call for fundamental social change, it is important to see and acknowledge that even the social model of disability is “laden with priorities, value judgements, and historical perspectives that are by no means neutral or transparent”.
Postcolonial theory
Having introduced the topics of development and disability from a rather critical point of view, the following section is going to focus on opening up the political struggle underlying these concepts recognised via the postco-lonial theoretical lenses. The basic idea of postcopostco-lonial theory is that eco-nomic and cultural legacies of colonialism are still present in our contem-porary society, and besides being present they still play a crucial role in the construction of the social and political power relations of our world. Both ghai (2012, p. 273) and Chataika (2012, p. 254) emphasize that postcoloni-al theory looks at society, culture, and literature in two perspectives: on the one hand, it reflects on a colonial past and looks at how an author and their context reflect on a colonial past, and, on the other hand, it is asserted that postcolonial writings have the power of discovering a “new way of creating and understanding the world”. ghai further argues (2012, p. 273) that post-colonial theory has the capability to serve as the instrument used to recog-nise oppressed identities and to grasp the historical and symbolical under-standings of the Other.
The wording “them” and “us” is, however, rather usual in Western aca-demia, which tendency becomes quite intriguing from a colonial discourse analysis perspective. “Colonial discourse analyses challenge the neutrality and objectivity of academia, and its role in constructing stereotypes, im-ages, and knowledge”, and so via looking at language and discourse from a post-structuralist perspective it aims at ending institutional suffering (An-dreotti, 2011, p. 86). Consequently, language itself and the examination of a text is ideological, which implies the “worldly” nature of texts (Said, 1983) and that “interpretations of the world create the world or reality itself” (An-dreotti, 2011, p. 87). Discourse using the social construction of the category of the Other creates therefore a distinction which can easily be understood as discrimination, and so it is argued that discrimination people with a disa-bility experience “on grounds of disaa disa-bility is similar to apartheid” (Chataika, 2012, p. 260). An extreme but appropriate and maybe even too expositive
justification for this claim could be the eugenicist disposition and genocide done by the Nazi germany, which example plainly manifests the connec-tions between racism and disablism. Accordingly, the struggle I mentioned in the beginning of the section is about questions of “oppression, voice-lessness, stereotyping, undermining, neo-colonisation, postcolonisation, ‘them and us’ and bridging the gap between the global North and global South spaces in the disability and development agenda” (Chataika, 2012, p. 252). Realising thus the need for interdisciplinary analyses of develop-ment and postcolonialism within disability studies is I believe vital when keeping a global context and the picture of a different future in mind. The next part of the paper will therefore argue for a critical upgrade of disabili-ty studies.
critical disability Studies
Disability studies is a discipline that is essentially concerned with the ways disability has been created as a social category. It studies disability as a com-plex social phenomenon and investigates “how the category has been insti-tutionalized in social practices and intellectual conventions” (Linton, 2005, p. 518). Linton (2005, p. 518) describes that the focus within the field lies on bringing people with a disability “closer” to society i.e. to naturalise and “remake [them] as full citizens”. Provided the previous section and Linton’s use of vocabulary that indicates a context where people with a disability are not only struggling to fit into “normal” society but had even been made infe-rior members of it, I find it hard not to agree with Barker and Murray (2010) who call for the decolonisation of disability studies.
Looking at the context of disability from a postcolonial perspective, we are presented the problem of inequality and injustice that inherently origi-nate from exploiting and disempowering power relations that aim at elim-inating human differences (Andreotti, 2011, p. 93). Past practices do have an influence on the present and on the future, so we cannot allow turn-ing a blind eye to the hundreds-of-years old tradition of disability-based ex-clusion starting in the Age of enlightment when prominent thinkers such as Hume, Locke, Mill, and Rawls simply excluded people with a disability from their perceptions of social justice (Altermark, 2017). However, grech (2012), for instance, emphasizes that people with a disability do not stand outside of history but they themselves carry stories that show how they were artificially put to be part of the subaltern. What is important to see is
how these colonial constructions make up the contemporary nature, mean-ing and ideas about disability. Vocabulary referrmean-ing to disability such as de-ficiency, sub-normality, and impairment implies that these people are in the need of cure, which shows that the dominant discourse of disability stud-ies is “not in the language of emancipation or justice, but in the vocabulary of charity, technical enterprise, and a deep paternalism” (Chataika, 2012, p. 255). Also, as expressed by both Sherry (2007) and ghai (2012), a postco-lonial read into the binary construction of either being “able” or “dis-able” might not only have negative moral and political consequences but could even be serving such political purposes as “the disabled […] does [hardly] have a place […] in [contemporary] social and public space[s]” (Malec, 2005, p. 286). Therefore, there is an urgent need to alter the terms of our formal analyses, to deconstruct the present tradition of oppressive representation (Barker & Murray, 2010), and for disability studies to learn from
postcolo-nialism in order to work toward and not for the Other (Andreotti, 2011,
p. 93). The objective of critical disability studies is thus to address existent power relations and to entice alternative emancipatory practices and social change (Chataika, 2012) triggered by attention to cultural difference, reflex-ivity, dialogue, and situated experience (Barker & Murray, 2010, Andreotti, 2011, Malec, 2005).
critical Global disability Studies
As indicated by the previous section, the need for a different perspective within disability studies is therefore indeed necessary, especially as it is a multidimensional and multifaceted problem we are facing. The way I see it, a postcolonial read into the nature of disability studies serves not only one but two understandings of subordinating power relations: it reveals, on the one hand, a metaphorical colonialist understanding of the disposition and labelling of people with a disability as inferior by the state all around the world but mostly in Western societies, and, on the other hand, the contro-versial presence of global North “expertise” in global South contexts which can literally be understood as neo-colonialist endeavours. As people with a disability are generally and still described as dependent on the “good will” of others and professionals to come and “fix” them (Chataika, 2012, p. 255), their capability of independence and self-determination globally needs to be argued for (Altermark, 2017). However, “the ‘crucial role’ of the global North ‘developing’ the global South” (Chataika, 2012, p. 259) also needs to
be addressed. grech (2012) for example explains how the West exports epis-temologies to the “less developed” parts of the world very often without the pivotal awareness of local ideologies. This misleadingly suggests not only the transferability of Western knowledges but also the unbalance of pow-er and the omnipotent and omniscient pursuit of global North proficiency. The epistemic violence described by Spivak (1998) is most recognisable within disability studies in the exportation of the social model to the South. This affair suggests that Western superiority is neutralised (Kapoor, 2004, p. 629) and that the global North “‘bring[s] light’ to the South through re-dressing its ‘social ills’” (Chataika, 2012, p. 259), while it simply omits the fact that this in many cases deteriorates the local, traditional way of care in communities (grech, 2012). Western disability studies literature often accounts for “backward” and “uncivilised” cultures to be abandoning, hid-ing, neglecthid-ing, and killing people with a disability, while it has a tenden-cy of overlooking the exploiting nature of Western colonialism and the pre-sent violent conflicts often coordinated by the West being a major cause of contemporary poverty and impairment in the global South in the first place (grech, 2012, p. 54, 60). To top it all, Chataika (2012, p. 255) points out that the global North’s “consultant” status in global “relationships” is not only contributed and driven by “expertise” but with the budget and there-fore prospects of profit as well. The section that follows will therethere-fore try to uphold this statement.
The WHo’s MInd Project
To corroborate the arguments given by the section before, I would like to in-troduce the WHO’s MIND project with the help of Titchkosky and Aubre-cht’s (2015) critical article. The abbreviation WHO’s MIND stands for the World Health Organisation’s Mental Health Improvements for Nations De-velopment project that encourages national deDe-velopment via a controver-sial way of conceptualising and treating mental illnesses. First of all, the WHO perceives and so advocates disability as a strictly biologically condi-tioned peculiarity of bodies, minds, and senses that have “gone wrong”, and so approaches the topic from a purely positivist and rather narrow-minded perspective (Titchkosky & Aubrecht, 2015, p. 77). Also, it defines disabili-ty as an “asocial problem that is […] understood to cause all sorts of social problems such as lack of work, poverty, and restrictive social and emotion-al environments” (Titchkosky & Aubrecht, 2015, p. 79). Furthermore, the
WHO (2011, p. 5) defines mental illnesses as a major form of disability by reason of the “facts” that show that 450 million people suffer from mental or behavioural disorder globally, that depression is going to be the “number one burden of disease by 2030” (The NgO Committee on Mental Health, 2012), and that “the pervasive nature of mental illnesses […] results higher cost and lower productivity” (WHO, 2011, p. 6). Thus, the picture is becom-ing quite cumbersome as the WHO represents disability as somethbecom-ing that is measurable and people with a disability as a cost, a burden, and as a lack of productivity (Titchkosky & Aubrecht, 2015, p. 72). That is, the WHO rep-resents disability as a barrier to development, and so as a factor influencing the global question of poverty, inequality and injustice, and not the other way around.
In light of this, it seems like the WHO perceives it as self-evident that most people with a disability are located in the so called “developing coun-tries”, as it is them that have “failed” to implement “adequate” treatment plans (Titchkosky & Aubrecht, 2015, p. 76), that is, plans whose putting into practice “requires access to rarefied languages, disciplinary knowledge and technologies designed, managed and, in the case of pharmaceuticals, patented by Western powers” (Titchkosky & Aubrecht, 2015, p. 71). Putting on the postcolonial theoretical lenses helps us thus see the WHO as a neo-colonising organ in contemporary times, the underlying power relations and “knowing better” attitude, and that colonisation has always been key in the achievements of modernist medicine (Sherry, 2007). The WHO ex-pects countries to realise disability as a medical phenomenon because med-ical problems are solvable by “the modernist approaches” of science, and so
solving “the problem of disability” is universally the way towards
nation-al development. Investing in Western medicnation-al expertise, according to the WHO (2011, p. 5–6), is therefore “the right thing to do” and not doing so is “very expensive”. Consequently, I am naively hoping that the ironic abbrevi-ation of WHO’s MIND is only a pure coincidence and not a consciously con-ceived, almost arrogant acronym that openly projects Western superiority.
In conclusion, provided that the section above discusses documents of-ficially presented by the WHO, it needs to be acknowledged that both colo-nial discourse analysis, postcolocolo-nial theory, and critical disability studies are inevitable in developmental discussions of such nature. Disability is a global phenomenon, and in order for us to start perceiving it in a different way we need to both start understanding the various cultural experiences of it and stop conceptualising it as a problem. As a result, “[i]f contexts and circum-stances vary and are not static, so is the meaning of disability fluid,
dynam-ic and shifting, [and] constantly (re)negotiated” (grech, 2012, p. 58). This is the reason why grech (2012, p. 66) argues for a critical global disability studies which, quoting Santos (2007), he understands as being “about decol-onising debates, and about making present and credible, suppressed, mar-ginalised and disaccredited knowledges”.
discussion of Educational Implications
So far, this paper has concentrated on arguing for a critical and global di-mension of disability studies, let us now turn to what educational impli-cations this change of perspective might incorporate. To highlight it once again, understandings of disability are without question “rooted in histo-ry and culture as well as [in] social contexts” and, on top of that, zaorska (2014, p. 228) argues that these understandings often affect negatively even the future employability of people with a disability. A postcolonial perspec-tive, however, realises “the goal of education [as] enabl[ing] individuals to reflect critically on the legacies and processes of their cultures and contexts, to imagine and negotiate ‘otherwise’, and to take ethical responsibility for their decisions and actions” (Andreotti, 2011, p. 93). That being said, while issues of race, gender, sexual orientation, ethnicity, religion, or nationality are naturally considered to be part of educational discourses of emancipa-tory nature, just like the field of development studies, global justice educa-tion seems also to rather fail to include people with a disability into its dis-cussions.
global justice, defined by Mandel (2006, p. 102), is a duty that “re-quires that everyone helps to create and to sustain institutions that can pro-tect and provide access to basic human rights”, while Marquis et al. (2018, p. 854) argue that global justice education “proceeds from the recognition that [educational institutions] have an ethical obligation to develop stu-dents’ capacity to understand and enact this duty”. The way I see it, glob-al justice education is thus a concept that exceeds, or better said links the notions of human rights-, international-, multicultural-, intercultural-, and peace education and education for global citizenship and sustainable devel-opment. Consequently, since the role of education in developmental proce-dures is dependent on how we define development itself and since this pa-per conceptualised development as a state to be reached where nobody is left out and everybody has a right to independence and an own destiny,
I be-lieve that disability should be by nature part of discourses of global justice education as well.
As a matter of fact, I would like to indicate the very importance of this article in highlighting that a decolonised understanding of disability ought to, in fact, be naturally part of global justice education i.e. all education-al discourses that to any extent are of an emancipatory nature. education plays a crucial role in decolonising contemporary understandings of disabil-ity, which implies that education plays a crucial role in transforming minds and hearts that take global-North diagnoses and medicines for granted too. In order for education to play its role in social-justice-based developmental processes, however, a comprehensive, multifaceted, and flexible conceptual-isation of disability needs to be reached and agreed upon. This article thus calls for the international and comparative investigation of the nature and meaning of disability in different socio-cultural contexts so that present, marginalised, and disaccredited knowledges of a complex and heterogene-ous disability experience can be incorporated into global justice education agendas inevitable for the realisation of social-justice-based development processes.
conclusion
To sum it up, the aim of this present article was to portray a connection be-tween understandings of development, disability studies, and postcolonial theory, and to highlight the role education might in general play in the em-pirical realisation of just societies. Having pointed out that “both the dis-courses of postcolonialism and disability studies rewrite the relationship between the margins and the centre by deconstructing the colonialist and imperialist ideologies as well as albeit hegemony” (ghai, 2012, p. 284), the paper argued for a critical global disability studies and for the conceptuali-sation of a social-justice-based development. Furthermore, by recognising the role of education in social-justice-based development, the paper then also promoted the concept of a global justice education that is inclusive of a decolonised understanding of disability. It is therefore argued that critical global disability studies needs to be understood not simply as an interdis-ciplinary – as previously indicated so by this article – but as a transdiscipli-nary endeavour (grech, 2012) where the greatest challenge is to acknowl-edge that either consciously or unconsciously we have been oppressing each other for a long time (ghai, 2012). Consequently, I argue that this paper
should serve as a call for further research into the racist, or better said dis-abilist perception and creation of disability (Sherry, 2007, p. 19) because our socially constructed differences such as race, class, gender, ethnicity, nationality, religion or disability should not be factors that impoverish but that empower human relationships (Chataika, 2012). Aiming at outlining a proud and equal disability identity that does not lack any life sustenance and is free to develop its own destiny, critical global disability studies seems to have the potential of fulfilling this aspiration.
bibliography
Altermark N. (2017), The post-institutional era: Visions of history in research on
intel-lectual disability, “Disability & Society”, 32(9), pp. 1315–1332.
Andreotti V. (2011), Actionable postcolonial theory in education, Palgrave Macmil-lan, New York.
Barker C., Murray S. (2010), Disabling postcolonialism: Global disability cultures and
democratic criticism, “Journal of Literary & Cultural Disability Studies”, 4(3),
pp. 219–236.
Chataika T. (2012), Disability, development and postcolonialism, [in:] D. goodley, B. Hughes, L. J. Davis (eds.), Disability and social theory: New developments and directions, Palgrave Macmillan, Houndmills–Basingstoke–Hampshire, pp. 252–269. Desai V., Potter R. B. (eds.) (2014), The companion to development studies, Routledge,
London–New York.
ghai A. (2012), Engaging with disability with postcolonial theory, [in:] D. goodley, B. Hughes, L. J. Davis (eds.), Disability and social theory: New developments and
directions, Palgrave Macmillan, Houndmills–Basingstoke–Hampshire, pp. 270–
–286.
goulet D. (1971), The cruel choice: A new concept on the theory of development, Athe-neum, New York.
grech S. (2012), Disability and the majority of the world: A neocolonial approach, [in:] D. goodley, B. Hughes, L. J. Davis (eds.), Disability and social theory: New
de-velopments and directions, Palgrave Macmillan, Houndmills–Basingstoke–
–Hampshire, pp. 52–69.
Kapoor I. (2004), Hyper-self-reflexive development? Spivak on representing the Third
World ‘Other’, “Third World Quarterly”, 4(25), pp. 627–647.
Linton S. (2005), What Is Disability Studies?, “Modern Language Association”, 120(2), p. 518–522.
Malec M. (2005), Experience of “otherness” as the situation of learning, [in:] A. Bron, e. Kurantowicz, H. S. Olesen, L. West (eds.), Between “Old” and “New” Worlds
Mandel J. (2006), Global justice, Polity Press, Cambridge.
Marquis e., Redda A., Twells L. (2018), Navigating complexity, culture, collaboration,
and emotion: Student perspectives on global justice and global justice education,
“Teaching in Higher education”, 23(7), pp. 853–868.
Said e. (1983), The world, the text, the critic, MA: Harvard University Press, Cam-bridge.
Santos B. D. (2007), Beyond abyssal thinking: From global lines to ecologies of
knowl-edges, “Review”, 31(1), pp. 45–89.
Sherry M. (2004), (Post) colonizing disability, “A Journal of Transnational Women’s and gender Studies”, 4, pp. 10–22.
Silvers A. (2010), An essay on modelling: The social model of disability, [in:] D. C. Ralston, J. Ho (eds.), Philosophical reflections on disability, Springer, London, pp. 19–36. Spivak g. C. (1994), Bonding in difference, [in:] A. Arteaga (ed.), An other tongue:
Na-tion and ethnicity in the linguistic borderlands, NC: Duke University Press,
Dur-ham, pp. 273–285.
Spivak g. C. (1998), Can the subaltern speak?, [in:] C. Nelson & L. grossberg (eds.),
Marxism and the interpretation of culture, University of Illinois Press, Urbana,
pp. 271–313.
The NgO Committee on Mental Health (2012, October 11), UN – global Mental Health, WHO Action Plan, http://historypsychiatry.com/2012/10/05/un-global-mental-health- who-action-plan-oct-11–2012/ [15.08.2019].
Thirlwall A. P. (2014), Development and economic growth, [in:] V. Desai, R. B. Potter (eds.), The companion to development studies, Routledge, London–New York, pp. 61–65.
Titchkosky T., Aubrecht K. (2015), WHO’s MIND, whose future? Mental health
pro-jects as colonial logics, “Social Identities”, 21(1), pp. 69–84.
World Health Organization (WHO) (2011), 2011 World Mental Health Day. The great push: Investing in mental health, http://www.wfmh.com/2011DOCS/2011%20 WORLD%20MeNTAL%20HeALTH%20DAY%20document.pdf [15.08.2019] zaorska M. (2014), Disabled person on the road to professional activation – selected
is-sues related to the realities of contemporary social reality, “Rocznik
